A shoemanufacturer in Troy, NY. Due to failing health and a heavy business loss due to fire, he pioneered to Wisconsin when he was 58 years old.

About 1840, living at that time in Rome, NY, Mayhew suffered heavy business losses when his shoe factory burned and a cargo of leather was lost on the Erie Canal. Soon after, the family moved to Troy, NY, Rensselaer County, the county in which Mayhew and his wife had been born and brought up. There his wife, Mary, and daughter Martha, supported the family doing tailoring. Later, about the time the family moved to Wisconsin, Martha toured widely in the states as a member of a concert company.

The family left Troy, probably about 1849, the year when son Wesley, 14 years old, was obliged to leave school to help support the family. They lived for a period at Burnt Hills, Saratoga County, as farmers. Across the road from them lived Peter and Margaret Dubois Ham, with whom they formed a close friendship and who preceded them to Wisconsin.

Following their friends to Wisconsin in 1853, The family travelled by way of the Erie Canal and the Great Lakes, docking at Sheboygan. When they reached Fond du Lac, they took a boat to Oshkosh. Mayhew brought shoe making tools with him and besides helping on the farm made shoes for the family in a little building back of the house and near the orchard.

Soon the family bought an 80 acre piece of land from Samuel Rogers of Winchester. The land was virgin and had to be cleared, largely by son Wesley. A small initial portion of their future home was erected at this time. Later were built a parlor, bedroom, pantry, dining room, kitchen with woodshed. Much of this house stood until at least 1948, the interior somewhat altered for the purposes of the illicit sale of liquor thirty or fory years after the family, known for their temperance principles, had moved away.

In 1856, at the age of 61 years, Mayhew D. Mott was ordained, at Appleton, a Deacon in the Methodist Episcopal Church by the Bishop who later gave the funeral oration at the burial of Abraham Lincoln - Matthew Simpson.

In spite of ill health, Mayhew D. Mott made unusual records as a pedestrian in his circuit preaching. It is not known with certainty whether the record of sixty miles in one day, carrying coat and satchel, was made in Wisconsin or earlier. (His grandson and namesake, in answer to the challange of this tale, succeeded in completing a 50 mile hike in one day.)

It was told of him, that, called upon to preach extempore, he responded with a three hour discourse. A two hour sermon was a matter of course in those days. Three hours only good measure.

Mayhew Daggett Mott at age 58 was a pioneer to Wisconsin in 1853 with his wife and two children, Martha and Wesley. He was a veteran of the War of 1812 (a marker to him and two other men was erected in 1976 in Winchester, WI by the State of Wisconsin) and evidently an entrepeneur in the shoe business. I suspect he was more than a simple shoemaker, for the family tradition passed down to his granddaughter was that he had a factory in Rome that burned down and a load of leather lost on the Erie Canal. His fortunes turned dramaticly sour and he returned to the area he was born in - just east of Albany, NY - and returned to farming. By the early 1850's he was living in Burnt Hills, New York and picked up stakes to follow his good friend, Peter Ham and his wife Margaret to Wisconsin. His son Wesley would marry Peter and Margaret's neice, Harriet Porter.

• Military: War of 1812, 1814, New York. He enlisted in Whitestown, Oneida Co., NY and served as a private in Captain John A. Weaver's Company of the New York Militia from Aug. 14, 1814 until Nov. 18,1814. At the time he was 19 years old. Reference: Pension Claim: WC 9 774 quoted in a letter dated 3 Nov. 1940 from the Chief of the Reference Division, National Archives, to Mayhew Mott of Neenah, Wisconsin.

• He appeared on the census in 1850 in Balston Spa, Saratoga County, NY. 4

• He appeared on the census in 1860 in Winchester, Winnebago Co., WI.

• He worked as a shoemaker in 1850 in Balston Spa, Saratoga County, NY. 4

Mayhew married Mary WAGER on 15 Sep 1821 in Brunswick, NY. (Mary WAGER was born on 6 Jun 1793 in Brunswick, NY,1 died on 14 May 1880 in Winchester, WI 16 and was buried in Winchester, WI.)

Sources

1Mott Family Bible. Mott Family Bible in the possession of Marion Mott Wauda of Neenah, WI. This Bible, published in 1836, contains Mayhew Daggett's signature with the date 1839. While most of the entries look legitimate, the entries for John Mott were made by one hand, Wesley Mott's, no doubt, with the information given him by Amanda Jones, or her sister Emily M. Jones Cooley. This information is from the documentation files on John Mott which is filed with the DAR, where a precise duplication of the John Mott entries is listed.